I had to do a little research on the backstory on the 488th greatest song of all time (according to Rolling Stone), "Rhiannon (Will You Ever Win)". Not that I wasn't familiar with the song, but I had never heard the legend that Stevie Nicks based it on.
The brain trust at Wikipedia says:
Rhiannon is a major figure in the Mabinogi, the medieval Welsh story collection. She appears mainly in the First Branch of the Mabinogi, and again in the Third Branch. She is a strong minded Otherworld woman, who chooses Pwyll, prince of Dyfed, as her consort, in preference to another man to whom she has already been betrothed.
Sure that's pretty confusing and weird, but have you ever looked at the song lyric?!!?
Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night and
Wouldn't you love to love her?
(No, I would love to have her stop calling me all night long. I'm trying to get some sleep!)
Takes to the sky like a bird in flight and
Who will be her lover?
(Apparently, it needs to be somebody else who can fly.)
All your life you've never seen
A woman taken by the wind
(True that...except for Dorothy Gale from Kansas.)
Would you stay if she promised you heaven?
(Stay? Stay where? Rhiannon is off flying around and I'm expected to just hang around where I'm at?)
Will you ever win?
(Doubt it.)
She is like a cat in the dark and then
She is the darkness
(Look! She's a bird! She's a cat! She's darkness! Kinda hard to nail down this free-spirited Otherworld woman.)
She rules her life like a fine skylark
(Aaaaaand now she's a passenger car by Buick. Enough already!)
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